Shedding Old Junk

We have a big shed in our backyard. We keep our bikes in there, my old tools and hardware, the snow boots and camping gear, and about 10,000 boxes and piles of junk.
Today I needed to find a few things. It was like one of those puzzles where there's one empty spot and you have to slide the tiles around to form the picture. Only the tiles were heavy and dirty and the empty spot was outside on the lawn. Ugh.
After a while I realized I'd gone far beyond trying to find those few things I was looking for. Without meaning to, I'd tackled the shed itself. I do this two or three times a year and when I'm all done there's an amazing amount of room in there. I could set up a ping pong table!
But getting to that point is awful, sorting through all the dusty chaos.
Right in the middle of this process, it occurred to me that this must be what some of my clients feel when we start in on their issues. It's a mess down there, in that old subconscious! Even with our great new cleaning aids like tapping, it's still a job of work. And we might not remember or realize just how spacious and wonderful and full of new potential that inner space can become.
Most of us start therapy for the same reason I started in on my shed today--we just can't put up with the mess any longer. We aren't even thinking about all that lovely space when we're done. It's a nice surprise.
Symbol of Chaos by Ant Allan

Lighten Up! Some thoughts on weight loss.

Let's play with this metaphor:

Caught up in an adventure, you escape from the bad guys by jumping into a hot air balloon. Casting off you quickly rise up out of their reach. Ha ha! But turning around you see the city rooftops rushing toward you—you aren't going to clear them! You'll crash and burn! Oh no!

At this point in the film, what do you do? You begin tossing sandbags over the side, of course. As you dump the extra weight, the balloon soars higher, clearing the rooftops and sailing on into a beautiful new day, full of promise and wonder. Pass the popcorn, please.

Lightening up is really just the flip side of losing weight, wouldn't you agree? We need to lighten up whenever we're taking things too seriously, feeling unhappy, forgetting to count our blessings or not enjoying life as much as we might. These are our sandbags.

Most people who struggle with weight loss are fixated on their body. The weight they want to lose is the excess fat on their stomach, thighs or butt. Since fat is a physical thing tied to eating too much, or eating the bad stuff, it just makes sense to diet and exercise.

But if this is just plain common sense, why doesn't it work? The weight always returns, and usually with a little extra thrown in. Why?

When you decide to go on a diet (and stay on it) that's a conscious decision. You've made that decision with your conscious mind, and your conscious mind likes to pretend it's in charge of your will power. But it really isn't.

Most people don't realize just how powerful their subconscious mind is. In fact, some people don't even know they have one! Consider the millions (or even billions) of tiny little decisions and actions required just to walk across a room (or lift a piece of chocolate cake to your mouth). Our conscious mind simply isn't up to the job. Almost everything gets decided subconsciously.

For example, suppose you are driving along and suddenly the brake lights on the car ahead of you flash red. Do you have time to think “Hmmmm, those break lights just turned red, what does that mean again? Oh yes, it's a message that I should hit my brakes. But really, I am in a hurry and why should I have to obey all these rules anyway? What's the worst that could happen...., oh right, a crash. Well that would be bad. I guess I'll hit the brakes to avoid it”?

When brake lights flash red a simple program is activated: , and your foot is on the brake pedal before you have time to think. That program is housed in your wonderful subconscious mind, along with thousands ( or millions) of other potentially less helpful programs.

Most people have a host of programs just around food issues. Here's a very simple example: . You can fill in the blank with your favorite treat. The problem with this particular program is that eating ______ will probably make you fat. The more you get fat, the more you feel sad. The more you feel sad the more the program is re-activated, and so on and so forth.

You may have dozens of food programs running all the time, and they may be tied in to all sorts of subconscious belief systems. A common one for many women runs something like .

If you set your conscious will power against a program like that, guess which one is going to win? These unhelpful (and sometimes toxic) subconscious programs are the sandbags we need to toss. And that's where Energy Psychology comes in.

It used to be with traditional talk therapy that the best you could hope for would be an understanding of your sandbags. You could eventually gain insight into what they were and where you picked them up, but there was no real way to chuck them over the side. That's all changed.

With the new meridian tapping techniques, like EFT, you can actually delete, erase, and replace these programs. The process basically involves calling the program up into your energy field, within a context of self acceptance, and then tapping on a sequence of acupuncture points. It sounds more complicated than it is. You can find more detailed instructions by clicking here.

My Never Diet Again program is based around a script to read while tapping. The script contains all of the most common sandbags, programs, core beliefs and emotional triggers that keep extra weight on and prevent lasting change. This will save you time and trouble digging around in your subconscious.

Whether you use our program or do it yourself, it's absolutely possible to tap away the barriers, not only to losing weight, but to feeling good about ourselves too.

One reason for optimism is this: Our bodies come to us all nicely programmed to recognize and desire just the right combination of foods for optimal health and well being. In other words, our “default” settings are perfect. So it's just a matter of removing all the added on junk.

And that's the weight to lose first.

That Old Stereotype

Does this sound familiar? A patient lies on a padded leather couch, while the bearded old Freudian analyst scribbles on his pad of paper and murmurs “go on” and “I see” and “yes, now tell me about your mother”. The whole affair is vastly time consuming, expensive and ineffective. Honestly, therapy is for rich, neurotic and pathetic New Yorkers who should just get over themselves, right?

I mention this common stereotype for two reasons. One is that many people are embarrassed to ask for help with emotional problems.

There is nothing frivolous or self indulgent about getting help!

To the contrary, it takes courage and responsibility to put the energy into making your life better. The desire to better ourselves and grow is essential to our humanity and to our happiness.

The second point I'd like to make is that EFT sessions are an incredible bargain. Instead of the long drawn out course of treatment in our stereotype, where you hope you might be getting better, with EFT you can expect to quickly resolve your issues permanently.

Most of my clients are “done” after one to six sessions. By this I mean they are substantially over their issues and able to engage life again with new energy and optimism.

Wading Through The Swamp

On a hike with my family this winter, the path forward was flooded. Up till then we'd been able to skirt the really muddy patches and puddles, but when we got to this point it was deep water all about. We couldn't go on without totally soaking our shoes.
It seemed that we'd have to go back the way we came. But that was a long muddy way. We were actually quite near the end of our trail.
We tried and tried to find a passage through, and had a heated debate about going back. But finally we just took our shoes off and waded through the swamp water.
It was actually my favorite part of the hike! The mud on the trail was just a bit squishy between my toes, and it was a rather warm day, so the water wasn't too terribly cold. At the end we found a faucet and washed the mud off. No harm done.
This struck me as a good metaphor for therapy! We've all got these boggy spots in our psyches. Flooded with emotion, if you will. We get swamped. They seem so unpleasant and impassable that we'll go to just about any lengths to avoid them, even when the direct path is straight through.
Many people are terrified of 'getting into it'. They feel that if ever they start crying they'll never be able to stop. They'll end up in the madhouse. Same thing goes for expressing anger or rage.
Most often the only way out is through.
What makes EFT so great is that it's like draining the swamp. You never sink in up to your neck, and the little bit of wading we do turns out to be not so bad. Ankle deep at best and then we're out. Okay, that's not a perfect metaphor, but I still like it.

I've Been Busy!

Since my last post I've been to Thailand, written a book and revamped my EFT website. Not to mention seeing a few clients here and there.
I went to Thailand to have my teeth fixed. I ended up saving over four thousand dollars doing this! And that's including the price of the airfare. I was so happy with the quality of the care I received, not to mention saving all that money, that I decided to write a "how to" book so other folks could take advantage of this opportunity. My book just went on sale yesterday. I'm going to put a little ad on this blog for it.
I've also re-done my website, mainly re-writing parts of it to match my growing understanding of energy psychology. I'm not liable to win the Pulitzer Prize, but I think it will be more useful for people looking for help. Here's a sample:

Another great feature of EFT involves the elimination of self-sabotaging and limiting beliefs. This can be a by-product of working with painful memories, or they can be pursued directly. What do I mean by “beliefs”?

We develop our “core beliefs” in two ways. By nature we interpret the events we experience. We might decide that the cruelty of a parent, for example, means that something is dreadfully wrong with us. Or that the world is not a safe place. Or that we should never sing, because that's what seemed to provoke the parent's anger.

Sometimes we are told these things directly by our parents or other authority figures. Once we accept these that we're clumsy, or mean, or lazy the pattern is set. Or we might ingest the idea that money is evil, or men are all pigs, or nothing comes easy in this world.

Once we adopt these beliefs they become the lenses through which we see and interpret future events. They tend to become self reinforcing. By subconsciously expecting bad things to happen we tend to attract them.

It can take years of traditional therapy to uncover and change these dysfunctional core beliefs. With EFT it can be done in a matter of hours, especially with the help of a skilled practitioner.

If you've been wanting positive change in your life, let me encourage you to give EFT a try, either on your own, or with a practitioner. Click here for more information on booking a session.

Walking Backwards Into The Future

A lot of my clients had terrible things happen to them. Sometimes as little children, babies even. Sometimes much more recently. And very often they’ll be transfixed by the past, and a great deal of their energy goes into coping with it.

Perhaps they’re stuck reliving the events over and over, trapped in a state of endless turmoil or sorrow or rage. Or they may be working so hard to repress old memories that their life is drained of joy and spontaneity. Some people get locked into patterns of reactive compensation, and end up following a life path that has no real meaning for them. They wonder why their life feels so dead. Or why they keep falling into the same destructive patterns.

I’ve started thinking of this preoccupation with the past as Walking Backwards Into the Future.

As folks start shedding the old traumas and emotional baggage, as the compulsion to look back starts to fade, often times they’ll be at a loss for a while. What do I do now? If I don’t have this ‘issue’ anymore, then who am I?

This is the most delicious moment in therapy, when the realization really sets in that “Oh my god, I am FREE”. And that’s when (grounded in the present) we can finally turn around and face the future. We can take stock of what we really want to do, and be, and start making new choices.

That’s really why I’m in this business.

The Swamp Monster

In the midst of her divorce and the death of her mother, Judy’s best friend essentially dumped her. She also found her supervisor and co-workers becoming increasingly un-supportive. No one wanted to hear about it and she began feeling increasingly isolated.

This was no surprise to me. Judy’s frustration, bitterness, negativity and sheer intensity were hard even for me to take. And it’s my job! She was alienating people left and right and just couldn’t help it. She couldn’t understand why no one was ‘there for her’. She was in too much pain to have empathy for their feelings.

So I gave her the analogy of someone who had been thrown into a swamp. An extremely yucky swamp, full of noisome smelly slimy green muck. Judy had gone in over her head and was trying to struggle back out onto solid ground—asking everyone around her to give her a hand and pull her out.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t recognize her. She was coated with muck and she stunk! And all that wild thrashing about! And she was roaring at them! She was a Swamp Monster and all they wanted to do was get the hell away!

So we used EFT—the emotional pressure washer—to start sloughing off the yucky emotions. It took a few sessions, but soon enough she was back on terra firma and ready to stop scaring people away. The day she began laughing in our session, I knew she’d made it.

Judy and the Avalance of Truama

Judy showed up late for her appointment in a state of agitation. She had been referred to me by her doctor, who felt that Judy’s emotional suffering and intense negativity might be helped with EFT. From the moment we shook hands she began talking rapidly and with intensity. She kept running her hands through her rather wild hair and I was afraid she might actually start pulling it out! As her story unfolded a whole catalog of traumas emerged:

After surviving a rare and especially aggressive form of breast cancer (and the accompanying chemotherapy and radiation treatments) she discovered that her husband of 23 years had become a meth addict. He had been using and lying to her for years, was cheating on her and, as soon as he found out she’d survive the cancer, became

increasingly abusive. He had also somehow ‘lost’ more than a hundred thousand dollars of the equity in their home!

During the incredibly bitter divorce that followed, Judy’s mom died unexpectedly. Judy was unable to get there in time and was suffering terribly from guilt, unexpressed grief and rejection (turned out that her mother hadn’t wanted her there, a harsh finale for a lifetime of really cruel negation).

Shortly after her mother died, Judy’s best friend suddenly ‘dumped’ her and refused to talk about it, or to talk to Judy at all. Next her oldest child went off to college—a good thing in itself, but another source of grief for Judy. Then, at the end of the divorce, Judy bought a house that turned out to have serious undisclosed problems. After a fire broke out she sued the sellers for damages and was still involved in a stressful lawsuit.

.

Finally, Judy was experiencing intense grief over losing her old house, which she had helped build. She missed it terribly and really hated her new place. After nearly a year she hadn’t unpacked.

This avalanche of traumatic events, mostly falling within the past year and a half, had left Judy emotionally devastated, bitter, unstable and socially isolated. She came to me for relief and was ready to get right to work.

We began with the divorce and her rage at her ex husband rage, betrayal, rejection and bitterness—clocking in at 9 or 10 on the intensity scale. Even though I have this intense anger I deeply love and completely accept myself. It took about 20 minutes and many rounds of tapping to get the intensity down to a 2 or 3, and our time was just about up.

At the end of that first session Judy reported feeling much much better. One of the greatest things about EFT is that results are usually immediate, leaving no doubt about whether “it worked or not”. Judy enthusiastically booked another session for a few days later.

Over the next five weeks we tackled issue after issue, with Judy doing plenty of “homework” in between. Judy was finally able to divorce her ex husband emotionally, despite his on going efforts to ‘get her goat’. She was able to reconcile to having lost her friend and work through her grief at losing her old home. In fact, Judy was able to actually celebrate her one year anniversary at the new place, by unpacking some of her more beloved artwork and hanging it up.

The day we began working on Judy’s grief over her mom’s death was a surprise. The grief resolved very quickly, but also opened out into childhood memories of rejection. She and her sisters were told explicitly and repeatedly that they were worthless and would never receive a penny from their parents, or any other support. Only her brother was prized. And as Judy was smarter, stronger and more capable than her brother, she was singled out for abuse and rejection. When her brother died in his early 20’s from an accident, Judy’s mom made a special point of declaring she’d wished it had been Judy instead!

This toxic upbringing had set up an unhealthy foundation for all of Judy’s later relationships. We tapped on feelings of being unlovable, competitive, isolated and rejected. We did this using specific memories and also directly naming the emotions. How do you know when it’s working? Judy would go from tears streaming down her face and almost too choked up to speak, to being able to calmly recount what happened—peacefully open to new insights, compassion and even forgiveness. Also, by the third or fourth session, Judy started laughing! And she said she was dreaming again--she hadn’t remembered a dream in two years.

Our very last session we tackled the cancer. Specifically, her fear of remission. This was the only issue this brave woman ever flinched away from. It was a dreadful fear, buried deep inside and covered up with layers of denial. Bringing it up was like a cold wash of nausea and despair. I felt it too! But we tapped our way through every dark and terrible aspect of that fear and we both felt a great weight lifting as we progressed. By the end Judy was visibly relieved, feeling better than she had in years. (And I would speculate—less vulnerable to actually experiencing remission!)

I heard from Judy about a month after our last session. She was quite happy, feeling herself to be firmly on the other side of a bad time. And she was actually dating someone! That was unexpected.

This case study was written up with the kind permission of my client. And of course the name and certain other details have been changed.

For information about EFT and my practice, please visit my new and much more extensive website: www.taprootsenergypsychology.com

When I first started my practice I used this blog as my website, intending it to be static—mainly offering information on EFT and who I am and what I offer. As my practice grew I decided to have a real website. It has a ridiculously long url, but lots of good information for people. It was a do it yourself project and doesn’t have as many bells and whistle as I’d like, but it gets the ideas across. But like most websites, it’s pretty much static—it’s a hassle changing it and the process of re-writing everything could drive me crazy. And where would that get us?

And so I’m starting over with this blog and I intend to make it as conversational as possible. I have case studies I want to share (with permission!) and thoughts on EFT and my own private practice as it evolves. I don’t know how much traffic I’ll get, but I’m hoping people use the comments—either to ask questions or to….leave comments?

In case you are new to blogs, they always have the most recent post at the top. So, if you want to start from the beginning, you’ll have to scroll down to the bottom and work your way up—sort of like the therapeutic process!